Re: Birth: An Anniversary

I woke this morning, mildly surprised to remember it was my birthday, that today it happened to fall on a Saturday, an actual day of the week, and on January 30th, a date which, like most others, occurs only once a year.

What a coincidence, I thought, that I should be born twenty-nine years ago on this day, and that I would be here twenty-nine years later when this day just happened to happen again.

I almost felt as if I should celebrate it...

* * *

Happy Birthday also to my daughter’s mom, who was born only a few hours before I was. I'll give her a call. Oh, she just texted me: Happy Birthday, Demitrius...

* * *

Other things that happened on this day in history:

Richard Brautigan was born in 1935.

The Beatles, in 1969, made their last public performance on the roof of Abbey Road Studios.

In 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by right-wing Hindu extremists for his efforts to bring peace to India by going on a hunger strike.

In 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.’s home was bombed.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in 1882.

In 1968, the Vietnam TET Offensive began.

Adolf Hitler, in 1933, leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party), became chancellor of Germany.

In a somewhat related event, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981 (the year I was born).

Horribly, in 1939, Hitler calls for the extermination of all Jews.

Unfortunately, Dick Cheney was born in 1941.

Parliamentary elections take place in Iraq in 2005.

* * *

Lots of other crazy things happened, too. I think about all these events, all the events I'm unaware of, all history spanning its own length like stretching its arms out after sitting at a desk all day, wanting to do nothing else but go home and go to bed. I forget who said it, but it's been said by several different people in several different ways: "It's good that there's time; it keeps everything from happeneing all at once."